Tagging apparatuses include, and may in their most rudimentary form consist exclusively of, a fastener dispensing gun or similar device having a hollow needle through which the fasteners are dispensed and onto which the articles to be tagged and the tags themselves are impaled. When the apparatus is of this most basic type, the operator manually effects impalement of the tags and articles upon the needle of the dispensing device, and then manually actuates the device to effect insertion of an interconnecting filamentary fastener through them. Although perhaps suitable for some occasional tagging operations, the foregoing manual technique is too slow, fatiguing and hazardous for high-production tagging operations, particularly those in which more than a single tag is to be attached to each article. In recognition of this fact, automatic tagging apparatuses have heretofore been proposed.
Illustrative of the previously proposed automatic tagging apparatuses is that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,235,161, issued Nov. 25, 1980 to Kunreuther and Beringhaus. Such apparatus includes means for mounting the fastener dispensing device in a fixed position, means for effecting automatic operation of the device in response to operator actuation of a readily accessible switch, and means for conducting tags from a supply hopper or the like to and onto the hollow needle of the dispensing device. In one embodiment the apparatus has two tag conveying assemblies that operate in sequence with each other to lessen the time required to secure a plurality of tags to each garment. An apparatus of the aforesaid automatic type can greatly increase the speed, efficiency and safety of the tagging operations, and therefore should significantly reduce the cost of such operations. However, this desirable result has not always been realized by the automatic tagging apparatuses heretofore commercialized, for a variety of reasons. Due to their size and/or complexity, such machines may be unduly expensive and difficult to manufacture, ship, assemble, adjust and/or maintain. Since adjustment of the apparatus is normally necessary not only during initial setup thereof, but also whenever there is a significant change in the size of the tags to be secured to the garments, a capability for rapid adjustment of the apparatus is particularly desirable. An additional disadvantage of those previously proposed "double" apparatuses having a pair of tag supplying mechanisms is that such mechanisms are both used only when a plurality of tags are to be secured to an article. When the tagging operation requires only a single tag per article, one of the tag conveying mechanisms remains unused and unusable. The economic wastefulness of this situation is aggravated if, as might well be the case, there is a concurrent need for another "single" tagging machine in the same plant where the only partially-used "double" machine is present.
With the foregoing in mind, a primary object of the present invention is the provision of a modular tagging apparatus that is of highly compact, efficient, economical and reliable construction, and that may be easily adjusted and/or modified to accommodate tags of differing size and/or to be uable in either single-tag or multiple-tag tagging operations.